'ART
& SOULCelebrating a lifeA recent exhibition on Anasuya
Sarabhai, popularly known as Motaben,
paid a tribute to the courageous
woman, who worked
selflessly for the uplift of the less fortunate

Kingdom I do not seek;
nor heaven or rebirth. All I desire is to be able to serve those who
are unhappy and alleviate their suffering.

The Bhagavata Purana,
IX-21-12

The
exhibition I saw recently at the India International Centre in
Delhi — moving in content, elegant in presentation — was a tribute
to the one person who lived her life by the above-cited words: Anasuya
Sarabhai. In many ways, it could be seen as an act of homage of one
icon — Ela Bhatt, founder of that great voluntary organisation, SEWA
— to another, for Elaben has always seen herself as someone who has
followed in the achingly simple but distinguished footsteps of Anasuya
Sarabhai. Each of them adopted and fought for causes, each of them in
her own fashion.

Anasuya Sarabhai in England.
from the Sarabhai Archives

Anasuya Sarabhai (Motaben) as a child. Photograph from the Sarabhai Archives

To go back to the life
that Anasuya led — Motaben is how she was affectionately addressed,
the word ‘mota’in Gujarat meaning only senior or elder — is to
travel back to another time, as it were, for values were different
then as were her circumstances. Born in 1885 in the affluent Sarabhai
family of Ahmedabad, she and her younger brother, Ambalal — who was
later to become the real founder of the fortunes and the great
prestige of the family — lost both their parents when she was only
nine; the children were brought up by an uncle, but it was she who
mothered her brother and a sister, who was barely one-year-old then;
at the age of 13, she was married off, but the marriage did not work
and she was back with her own family. The accounts one reads of the
bond that existed between her and Ambalal — ‘Bhai’ is how she
always called him — are moving. The affection and the respect they
had for each other lasted a lifetime, the brother always protective
and she always giving of herself.

Having been denied the
opportunity to study by her uncle, and by nature somewhat of a free
spirit, she went off in 1912 to England with the full support of her
brother. Her studies there got cut off by the need to return to India
for family reasons, but she had absorbed much while she was abroad. In
the account of her life that was recorded by her niece, the immensely
gifted Gira Sarabhai, she came under the influence of the Fabians,
listened to lectures by Bernard Shaw and Sydney Webb and Chesterton,
walked about in the streets unaccompanied, participated in the
Suffragette movement, learnt ballroom dancing, and smoked heavily:
"Abdulla No. 8, Ladies Cigarette, was my great favourite",
she recounted.

There is a photograph of
hers in the exhibition, wearing an uncommon dress — long-sleeved and
collared shirt, a wrap-around sari like dress, around her neck a
necktie with a fringe — which tells one a lot: things moving in
different directions.

But everything was going
to change soon. Once back, she wanted to ‘find herself’. Working
for women was one option, and her brother, a big textile mill-owner by
this time, supported her in every way; working with the poor was
another. She opened a school, took poor students in, regardless of
caste, bathed them and taught them. But what became a life-changing
experience were a sight and a conversation.

In her own words:
"One morning, I was sitting outside in the compound combing out
the children’s hair when I saw a group of 15 workers passing by as
if in a trance. I had already gotten to know some of them so I was no
longer afraid of them. I called them, even though I did not know them
well, and asked them, "What’s the matter? Why do you look so
listless?’ They said, "Behen, we have just finished 36 hours of
work…We have worked for two nights and a day without a break, and
now we are on our way home."These words filled me with horror.
This was no different than the kind of slavery women faced!" She
decided that she must do something to change this situation.

The more she learnt
about the state in which the mill workers lived and worked — the
grinding poverty, the feeling of exploitation, the sheer sense of
powerlessness — the more determined did she become to organise them.
1914 was the year: the plague that had decimated many in Ahmedabad was
just over, and anger in the workers was mounting. Better wages, better
working conditions is what they were legitimately demanding.

A view of the panels in the exhibition.
Photo: Somnath Bhatt

Motaben moved into the
forefront of their incipient agitation; a notice to all the
mill-workers was issued under her signatures; the strike commenced.
Her brother, Ambalal-bhai, was the head of the Mill Owners’
Association and when he got to know that she was at the head of that
agitation, he was furious. But Motaben was unmoving. The strike went
on for 21 days at the end of which negotiations began.

By this time, Mahatma
Gandhi, who was very close to the Sarabhai family, had also appeared
on the scene and turned gradually into a mentor for Motaben. The
mill-owners had finally to yield and bend. Soon afterwards, there was
the Kheda satyagraha and another 21-day strike. Unemployed as the
workers were, they busied themselves building an ashram for Mahatma
Gandhi, with Motaben playing a prominent part: carrying bricks and
sand. Many things followed: Motaben grew into a symbol of selfless
service over the years, a fearless icon. Because of her, at least a
part of the world had begun to change.

There is much to narrate
about her life, but it all comes alive in visual form in the
exhibition that I started talking about at the beginning, grainy
images, fading prints, and all. One sees Motaben as a child posing for
a fancy studio portrait, poring over a book as her Bhai dozes off in
his high children’s-chair next to her, standing wrapped in a men’s
long coat in cold England, talking to the suffragettes, sitting next
to Gandhi in a group photograph, addressing gatherings of workers,
growing old; one also sees the miserable surroundings in which the
mill workers and their families lived: naked and hungry children;
bleary-eyed workers fatigued from work. It is all very moving.

For Elaben Bhatt, who
visualised and mounted this exhibition, it has been an act of homage.
But for those who come to see it, it offers inspiration. I could see
this in the eyes of young boys and girls from a nearby school who were
visiting: reading the texts with care bordering on reverence, seeing
with wide-eyed wonder images of a courageous woman who, brought up in
the lap of luxury, gave it all up for a cause, excitedly drawing each
other’s attention to some face, some meaningful detail.